CR7 cruise speed Eagle ??

[Ted Striker]

The most fun(?) I've had in the CRJ was a few months ago, westbound at 350 with 48 in the back. The controller asked if we could do 390 to help him out with crossing traffic...we consulted the (always optimistic) flip-card and it showed 370 as do-able. He cleared us to 370, and somehow we staggered up there. Once we leveled off, the airspeed held steady for a bit, then began to decrease, even with climb thrust still set. You could see the nose-up deck angle slowly increasing as the speed bled off even more. I requested 350 again and of course the controller said 'in a few minutes'. Then he gave us a slight turn to cross behind traffic, and you could feel the airframe start to buffet. At a tad under 200kts, the shaker started and kicked off the a/p...I told the FO to start down NOW as I told the controller that we were heading back to 350, and I'd declare an emergency if I had to. He came right back with a clearance to 350, of course. Once we got there, everything was just fine. The airplane liked 350 but didn't like 370 one bit. Hey, that was fun, let's do it again sometime! not

This is seriously disturbing. The fact that you went to shaker in an airplane with a supercritical wing is almost sickening. I don't know who you fly for or what they are teaching you, but whoever said fill out a NASA form or ASAP is correct. Then I would have some serious conversations with the training department to find out what went wrong (assuming you were operating completely by the book). I am not trying to bag on you or say that I am Chuck Yeager, but this was 1000X worse than what you make it out to be. Get this figured out right away, whether it was your or your company's shortcoming. You were about a millisecond from killing over 50 people.

 

[JetPilot_Mike]

This is a problem I see from a lot of first officers, and even some captains that I used to fly with. The CRJ is so automated it is "dumbing down" the pilots. People are not thinking ahead, and are not looking at the big picture of what is going on with their airplane. Sure, the card may say you are good to FL350, but what if you are climbing through FL325 at 500 FPM, and the IAS is around 250 or so and .70M, it's ISA+5, and the trend vector is getting longer in the downward direction, do you really think we can make it to FL350 and not break a limitation or go below the green line? I like to go up high, and I'll give it a shot, but if doesn't look good, I don't keep going along and see what happens. I tell the controller that we are too heavy and ask for lower before I get myself into a bad situation, and while I still have some performance available. I believe that "a tad under 200kts" is a very bad situation. People need to put away the USAToday and start thinking more.

Help me off this soapbox now......

 

[TWA 2 ASA FO]

JetPilot Mike,

I am not adressing this to you as an insult, just an observation. You say you see this from a lot of F/O's. F/O's learn from Captains. I think the main problem here is that most Captains on the RJs at regionals were never F/O's on the RJ. They only learned a little during IOE and have developed their own wayw of doing things. F/O's you are flying with that are not doing it right are probably just repeating what they see from Captains at your company. When the "senior" guys transitioned to the RJ they were trained by a training department that didn't know about swept-back wings and high altitudes. There never was a starting point of experience. Sure the instructors went to school, and were typed in the RJ, but they didn't have time in it. This lack of experience understanding has trickeled down to the garden variety line pilot.

This guy who started this thread had NO IDEA how serious a situtation he was in. The reason he didn't is lack of training and lack of experience in the right seat with someone in the left seat who had experience. I hate to guess how many times this might happen on a given day among the regionals out there. Let me give you an example of an instructor, who was teaching high altitude and swept back wing characteristics to our new hire class. He asked, what would you do if you were at FL350 and encountered turbulance? All of us that had jet time said, fly .75M (the RJ turb speed is 280 / .75M for those of your not familiar). He said, you guys are all wrong, you must slow to 280 kias. THis just goes to show you that this instructor has very little time in jets, since 280 kias at FL350 would be WAY OVER the normal cruising speed of the RJ.

Regionals need to pay instructors enough that the senior guys who have experience will be the ones teaching. We used to have IOE guys at ASA that were regular line Captains. This is probably the best people to give IOE. They actually fly the airplane and know what the "real world" is like. Now we only have instructors who know how the "box" flies out giving IOE.

Unfortunately, it will take the loss of life at a regional to make the FAA mandate a change. This original poster, as sad as it is to say, was close to being the one who would make that happen.

 

[DenverDude2002]

I was told cruise was mach .73 on a flight from DEN-DFW in a CR7 on March 17 2003.

 

[mesa rocks]

no question that the bigger RJs are much better performers than the 200.
I have never flown the 700 but I have some time in the 900. We were half full and had no problem going to FL410 and holding .85 mach in cruise. I felt more inclined to have to pull the power back in climb and cruise in the 900 rather than constantly having to push the thrust levers forward to squeeze every drop of power out of the the 200.

After a couple legs of running it up, the novelty wears off. These days, I generally pull it back to .77 (filed speed) to save the engines and keep segment times high. Unless ofcourse its the last leg of the trip!

 

[JBcrjca]

Wow, I didn't know we had so many Chuck Yeagers and Jack Ridleys on this forum.

I know the situation that I described was a messy one that should never have happened. But, I do know how to operate the FMS in the predicted mode...I put in the winds and altitudes in for every single flight. The FMS didn't display the 'unable flt plan alt' message, so the FMS thought it was do-able. I know how to read a flip card using the exact weight and ISA temp. Who comes up with the numbers on the flip cards? The company? Canadair? I haven't the foggiest idea, nor do I really care. But when the FMS and flip cards both agree that something is possible, I figured that it was worth a try. Why wasn't the plane actually able to perform as advertised? Again, I have no idea.

To say "You were about a millisecond from killing over 50 people" is a bit of an exaggeration. It was 1.5 seconds of shaker, followed by an immediate descent. Canadair would obviously program a buffer into the system to protect the airplane from dumbasses like myself and OTHERS that have seen it. If it had gone to the pusher, then I'd agree... a millisecond away from killing 50 people. Nobody likes to declare an emergency to ATC, so I avoided it as long as I could; and I wanted to avoid a large turn because I know what that does to the green line. In the end, yeah I got bitten on the ass. Lesson learned.

I said it in my previous post, and I'll say it again...I'm not the first guy that has ever seen this type of thing, and I won't be the last. But if another CRJ driver reads this thread and uses the info to avoid a similar situation, then I'll humbly accept the beating the I have already received. And with that, I'm bowing out to let the beating continue. Or we could be like grown-ups and end it right here. Thanks for reading.

 

[Ted Striker]

I haven't the foggiest idea, nor do I really care. Again, I have no idea.

To say "You were about a millisecond from killing over 50 people" is a bit of an exaggeration. It was 1.5 seconds of shaker, followed by an immediate descent. Canadair would obviously program a buffer into the system to protect the airplane from dumbasses like myself and OTHERS that have seen it. If it had gone to the pusher, then I'd agree... a millisecond away from killing 50 people. Nobody likes to declare an emergency to ATC, so I avoided it as long as I could; and I wanted to avoid a large turn because I know what that does to the green line. In the end, yeah I got bitten on the ass. Lesson learned.

Your whole attitude toward this thing is scaring the hell out of me. Please disclose what airline you work for so we can all stay away. It's not so much that this happened (which is scary in inself), but the fact that you don't seem to think it was that big of deal. The fact that you have no idea what your flip cards are telling you, where the information comes from and that you take that as pure gospel is outrageous. You are depending on Canadair to put a dummy buffer in the airplane to save your ass is outrageous. There is really no excuse for what you did, but yet you keep making excuses and trying to rationalize it. Get out of the seat, you don't deserve it.

 

[TWA 2 ASA FO]

JBCcjrca,


I have to agree 100% with what Ted Striker said. You seem to think that getting the shaker at FL370 is "lesson learned". Being anywhere near the shaker at FL370 shows you have now idea about how to fly a swept-wing jet. If you fell below the recomended 250/.70M minimum that Bombardier recomends and kept climbing, you were setting yourself up for disaster. You need to find some literature on swept back wing designed jets and do some reading. You were just a few seconds from entering an unrecoverable situation. You might think, but I had 37,000' to recover, but that may not be enough.

From my 1,000 hrs in the 50 seater now, you need to realize that the upper 20's are the limit in the summer, and the lower 30's are pretty much it unless you are VERY light and have ISA - 5 to 10. Now saying that, I have been to FL390 twice in the 50 seater, but we were cruising at FL350 and over .82M on both occasions, and it was VERY cold outside. We started a 500 fpm climb and NEVER went below .75M in the climb. Once at FL390 we were able to accelerate to around .77-.78M at cruise power. Once again, this was with maybe 4 people on board and ISA -5.

You need to talk to yuor training department about why you were trainined so that you thought it was OK to do what you did. I hate to re-emphasize this, but you almost made the front page of USAToday.